Thursday, July 21, 2011

Bound for Baltimore

"Love of My Life"

Last year, on September 19th, 2010, I found out that this date was the very first Frank Zappa Day in Baltimore. Sadly, this date also commemorated the first year anniversary of my husband Rob's death. Because Rob had always idolized Frank Zappa and his creative genius, it seemed like a huge sign that I should make a journey this year, in honour of Rob and in honour of Frank, and go to the second annual Frank Zappa Day.

I want more than anything in the world for this to happen! A couple of years before Rob's death, he would tell me every time when Zappa Plays Zappa came into Ontario how much he wanted to go see them play, and I would tell him that it all depended on our finances. Being on the pittance that ODSP gave us and drowning in debt, it, unfortunately, just never happened. For Rob to see Dweezil Zappa and some of Frank's old band mates perform his favourite songs live - that would have made him deliriously happy!

The music of Frank Zappa was always in our lives, right from the beginning. When Rob and I first started dating, he gave me a cassette tape of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and asked me to choose my favourite songs from it. I chose "'The Closer You Are", "You Are What You Is", "Bobby Brown" and "Sharleena." Rob and I decided "Love of my Life" should be our song, for obvious reasons. When I was pregnant, we were going to name our daughter Sharleena. Rob wanted to name our son "Greggery Peccary," but I drew the line!

So, on September 17th, a group of friends and I are driving down to Baltimore and staying until September 19th. It's going to be cool, great, fantastic, brilliant!!! We're going to have a ball! I want to play Zappa music all the way there and back, and I'm going to film the whole experience so I never forget it! Actually, I've been making a few short films to get ready. Here's where you can see what I've done so far:

http://annethevideo.tumblr.com/

I know I've said it's going to be fun and brilliant, sure, but it's also going to be damned hard. It'll be the two year anniversary of Rob's death - how can that be? Well two years or twenty, Sweety, you'll always be the love of my life.